


Break My Face

by PrinceMalice



Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Marvel, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, A lot - Freeform, Brief mentions of other characters - Freeform, Deadpool dies and comes back a lot, Gore, Identity Reveal, M/M, PTSD, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Precious Peter Parker, Temporary Character Death, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:00:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26056855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrinceMalice/pseuds/PrinceMalice
Summary: Deadpool died all the time. It was kind of a modus operandi with the mercenary. He was used to it. In a sick way, Peter was also used to it. The merc would take a bullet to the brain like a tic tac. No matter how gnarled or dismembered he became, Deadpool always pulled himself together, and it was normal..Or four times Wade died saving Peter's life, and the one time Peter almost died saving his.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Wade Wilson, Spider-Man/Deadpool
Comments: 32
Kudos: 739
Collections: Wick’s Ultimate Arachnid Archive





	Break My Face

**Author's Note:**

> Title and segment dividers are lyrics from Break My Face by AJR, my current spideypool theme song. I haven't written fanfiction in so long, I hope you enjoy! I have a few more ideas brewing for more spideypool!

_What doesn’t kill you makes you ugly._

  
  


The only thing Peter could think of was being back in middle school, fingers deep in a bowl of wet spaghetti. It had been the last time he and Harry had really been able to just be stupid, dumbass kids. They’d scribbled onto brown paper bags the likenesses of Iron man and Captain America respectively, and donned overpriced insignias that they tried to pass off as costumes. It was all a ploy to get into the haunted house Flash Thompson’s older and cooler cousin had set up. Costumes were a requirement to get in, and maybe with the paper bag masks, if they ran across Flash himself, he wouldn’t recognize them and kick them out. 

Some of the set up was actually pretty elaborate, but most of it was Pinterest-esque finger foods and jump scares. 

The box on the counter had a hole just the right size to slip a hand into. “Guts and gore galore!” was scribbled onto the side in hotrod red marker. Peter put his hand in first, brushing aside Harry’s jokes about dicks in boxes and severed heads. His fingers sunk into a cool weave of what was clearly spaghetti noodles, but Peter tried to play along. 

_What’s it feel like?_ Harry had asked. 

_Guts,_ Peter had said. 

Peter was knuckles deep in the hamburger meat of Deadpool’s back when he regained consciousness. His fingertips dipped gently between strings of muscle that had snapped like rubber bands. 

Deadpool’s body, stiff and firm and large and oh-so-very dead, crowded Peter against a red brick wall. The weight of it alone kept Peter propped upright for however long he had been unconscious, which could have been seconds or hours, but most likely seconds based on just how fresh the trenches of Wade’s skin felt. Most of the blood had boiled off of him in the explosion, but the bits that soaked into the Spider-Man suit were still very wet. 

The day had started off so well: the kind of morning that in hindsight should have made it blindingly obvious what kind of shitshow was stewing around the corner. Peter won ten bucks from a scratch off he got at work, and he used that ten bucks to get the biggest, most extravagant Frappuccino from Starbucks that he could stomach. His midterm grade appeared in his student portal, a solid A, and damn was he surprised by that because of how much schoolwork he shirked to attend to web-slinging matters. Then, on his way to work, good old normal civilian slash samaritan Peter Parker helped an old lady cross a street, a cat down from a tree, and retrieved a pair of stolen glasses from a few schoolyard bullies. The morning had passed in a flurry, a montage of “ _Mr. Blue Sky_ ,” and he made the big fat mistake of thinking, _Huh. This is gonna be a good day._

Deadpool died all the time. It was kind of a modus operandi with the mercenary. He was used to it. In a sick way, Peter was also used to it. The merc would take a bullet to the brain like a tic tac. No matter how gnarled or dismembered he became, Deadpool always pulled himself together, and it was normal. The sinew threaded through his fingers reminded Peter of eating a chicken wing, of plucking the blue veins from the crevices of his teeth. Normal. Totally not worth freaking out about at all.

Peter’s stockpile of villians was vast. He had a punch card for evil gimmicks and another for tragic backstories, and he was close to the get-one-free part of the deal. He didn’t think too much of that evening's desperado: a lone man in a trench coat, wielding two assault rifles in the middle of a crossroads. Yeah, that was nothing. That was a Tuesday. That was just another incel on a power trip who needed an ass-kicking and some good old fashioned therapy. Peter did get cocky. He was high on the day and how easy it was to snatch up each weapon, plucked from the screaming man’s fingerless gloves. 

“Does your father know you got into his gunlocker?” Peter chided, filling the compartments of each weapon with web fluid. “I’m sure he’d be very disappointed in you, young man.” 

The man, yelling nonsense, so average, so unassuming, opened his coat, and that’s when Peter knew he’d fucked up. Let his guard down. Didn’t have enough time to stop the man from detonating the bomb duct-taped to his abdomen. 

Peter should have been spider-bits. But Wade, in all his Deadpool _ala_ deus ex machina, was there, swooping into his peripheral as the street lit up.

Then Peter woke up, back pressed into a wall, front blanketed in Wade tartare.

Peter, in school, at that Halloween party, had chased Harry with his spaghetti sauce hand, cornering him and smearing the mess of it over his face like a beard of blood. 

Wade had died many times, but that was the first time he’d died saving Peter. The mincemeat of his back was not something Spider-Man could have walked out of. In fact, as Wade's body started to weave itself back together, a phenomenon which Peter could feel against his fingers, the muscle tissue nearly stitched Peter's hand right into itself. Vaguely, Peter wondered if Wade had ever had an object heal inside himself before, or if Peter was going to be the first.

He ripped his hand free from the netting.

Peter had seen the revivals from afar, Wade twisting and rising like a marionette, untangled. This time he felt the weight of the merc shift from dead to alive. Felt the first sharp inhale suckle against his exposed skin where patches of his suit had singed away. From still life, to real life. 

Wade's head, which had been lax against Peter's shoulder, perked up, wiggled, turned to look at Peter, Spider-Man, the large wells of his eyes, as if he hadn’t only been dead mere moments before. 

“Well,” Deadpool said, “this is awkward. Just pretend that's a glock in my pocket.”

Peter let out a stuttering laugh.

“You, uh… doing okay?” he asked. Like an idiot. _Hey I know you just got blown up, but are you cool? Can I go? This is incredibly awkward for reasons I can’t really put my finger on right now._ “Your, uh...back is missing. Was missing.

Peter touched Wade’s back again. Instead of “guts and gore galore,” he felt the normal, albeit ridged scars of skin that normally comprised Deadpool’s back. Not that he had any experience touching it, but he definitely preferred it like that to how it had been in tatters. 

“Oh.” Wade glanced over his shoulder. “Huh. My whole ass is out. Damn. Don’t look, Spidey!” he guffawed, peeling away from Peter. Then he placed his palms comically over his cheeks and turned around, shaking his barely censored butt in Peter’s direction. “On second thought, you can look if you want!”

Peter tried to take deep, long breaths as he examined the wreckage around them. No bodies in sight, just rubble, and the crisp burnt-marshmallow skin of the bomber lying in the street. 

“Hey, you okay?” Wade asked, plucking at Peter’s elbows, exposed and red where the flames had lapped at him. 

“These?” He laughed. “I’ve been more injured walking into walls. Dude, you were dead.”

Deadpool shrugged. He could dust his shoulders off and pretend he didn’t just die for Peter. No big deal. 

Peter could still feel the phantom clutch of Wade’s muscles sucking his fingers in, like embroidery thread, decorating the fabric of scarred flesh.   
  
  


_Life gives you lemons. At least it gave you something._

  
  
  


The second time Wade died for Peter, it was quiet and soft and oh-so-much worse. 

Peter had only recently purged the memory of Wade dying literally on top of him, and even so he sometimes still woke in the night when the blankets felt too heavy, thinking he was back in that moment, and the thick blankets were Wade. He’d dart his eyes from one concrete outline in the darkness to another, until he realized he was in his room and safe and that he hadn’t seen Wade in weeks, anyway. 

Peter genuinely considered speaking to a therapist. How do you explain to someone (a very normal, not super someone) that your friend died, but actually didn’t die, so you’re stuck between grieving and angry and some other regurgitated emotion that you hadn’t been able to identify yet?

Peter tried to keep those cyclical thoughts jammed into the backmost corner of his mind while he scaled the dilapidated wall of the old fisherman’s warehouse. He was sick of warehouses and really someone ought to take a few preventative measures and maybe not leave empty warehouses lying around for villains to use. He’d write a strongly worded letter about it to the mayor when he was done because, _seriously_?

The glass in the window was already in shards on the cold, concrete floor. Peter crept into the building, staying close to the wall, up and out of sight. 

It was a simple reconnaissance job. A lot of goons webbed to lamp posts had pointed their crooked fingers in the direction of the building. It was dead quiet and coated in a fine layer of dust and looked about as abandoned as a place could possibly get, except for one large, boot-shaped disturbance beneath the window. 

He slithered across the ceiling, dipping his head into each doorway, each containing only rotting boxes and the occasional squatter nest, also abandoned. It was starting to look like a waste of time, but then came a _pop._ Like a champagne cork, or an especially sticky bubble of gum bursting. 

Peter hit the floor flat on his back. He ran his hands quickly over the trunk of his body, thinking, _Was I shot? I might have been shot_. 

Smoke flooded the room, opaque and velvety blue. It smelled like pool cue chalk, and burned like whiskey in his lungs. Peter rolled onto his stomach, keeping his head low as he crawled in the direction he remembered the door being, but the smoke didn’t disperse. In fact, it seemed to grow denser, his limbs growing weaker. Maybe if he just lay down for a minute, he could regain his strength. Yeah. That seemed like a solid plan.

Deadpool appeared through the smoke, an apparition of black and red and one large oxygen mask strapped over his usual one. Peter tried to giggle, but couldn’t catch his breath. The deep sound of the tank strapped to Wade’s back reminded him of Darth Vader. Peter would have to do some psych evaluation later when the monsoon in his mind quieted, because hallucinating Dead Vader seemed to be some kind of red flag. 

“Oh shit, baby boy.”

Huh. Maybe not a hallucination, then.

At that point, Peter felt his consciousness flipping channels rapidly. Wade. Smoke. Static. Blackness. Wade. Blackness.

Wade lifted Peter gently by the dip of his back. Peter never felt so small, and he knew Wade was large. Large enough to protect him from a blast. Large enough to cradle his body in the valley of his arms. 

A thick, gloved thumb wedged beneath the edge of his mask, but Peter was too blissed out to be concerned. The leather was cool to the touch, which made him realize he was burning up, the thumb leaving an icy print along his jaw.

Deadpool pulled Peter’s mask up to rest across the bridge of his nose. 

“Damn, Briar Rose,” Wade said. “They’re even more beautiful up close.” 

At first, Peter thought Wade was kissing him with the cold lips of the Deadpool mask, but oxygen flooded Peter’s lungs. It was as though he’d been ripped back into reality by a life line. Wade wasn’t Darth Vader. He was there, above him, holding his own oxygen mask to Peter.

Peter guzzled at the air, dragging everything back into focus. For a moment, Wade and Peter stayed still, looking at one another. As Peter grew stronger, Wade began to sag forward, until his solid body rested entirely on Peter. 

It was time to go.

If Peter hadn’t had enhanced strength, he wasn’t sure he could have gotten out from beneath the mercenary. Wade was pure muscle, and the steel weapons strapped across his body only managed to weigh him down. Peter was able to hoist Wade up by an arm. Beneath his touch, Wade took rickety and shallow breaths, until they stopped completely.

Peter tried not to think about the fact that his friend was once again a corpse in his clutch. He tried to focus on the walls, following along them in search of a door or a window or anything. Peter felt like he was deep sea diving. The whir of the oxygen tank like tinnitus in his ears. The blue of the air, rich and nautical. 

He tried not to think about uncle Ben, on the cold and damp asphalt of the streets. He tried not to think about Gwen. Limp. Dangling. At least once a day Peter argued with himself about whether or not their deaths had been his fault, but this time, Wade’s stone-still cadaver dragging behind him, this was his fault.

He literally stole the oxygen from him. The inhalations that had been so intoxicating and sweet turned to sludge with guilt. It wasn’t the time to panic. He needed to find an exit. _Focus, Peter._

Wade’s body took a sharp breath, slurping up more of the dense poison in the air before it convulsed and died again.

Peter didn’t stop to think when he finally found a window, just lifted Wade up and catapulted the two of them through the pane. 

“Ya know, I almost had 'em cornered. The gas was a cheap trick,” Wade said. 

The two of them sat on the rooftop of a building adjacent to the fishing warehouse, Wade resting his head on Peter's lap.

“I’ve been tailing these assholes for ages. Biochemical warfare. Psssh. I’ve done party drugs that hit me harder than that.”

Peter sighed. It hadn’t taken too long for Deadpool to revive, but it felt like forever. The whole time he waited, Peter cradled his head, fighting away thoughts of Gwen and the very real fear he had that one day Wade was gonna die and stay dead. He didn’t even know he was afraid of that until moments before Wade woke up, stretched his arms out as if rising from a deep and satisfying nap, and promptly decided Peter’s lap was comfy enough that he would stay there for the time being.

“Damn. Dying makes me hungry. You hungry, Webs? We should get tacos. God, I haven’t had a taco in hours.” 

“Thanks, Wade,” Peter said.

“Um, I’m sorry, but I forgot my wallet, so you’re actually gonna be buying the tacos.”

Peter rolled his eyes and gave a playful, open palmed smack to Wade’s forehead. Still, he didn’t get up just yet. 

Wade didn’t either.   
  
  
  


_So if I break my face,_

  
  
  


Peter threw away his blue curtains. Their billowing waves in the breeze of the open window sent him spiraling back into the miasma of the warehouse, clutching at Wade’s limp body. He tore them down and stuffed them deep into the trash, burying the fabric beneath greasy paper plates and Dr. Pepper cans. 

He told MJ everything. He had to, after seizing up at the sight of her endless blue eyes. He told her about the bomb, about the particles of Wade’s DNA he swore he couldn’t wash off, and about the blue poison, and the way Deadpool had revived and died, a cycle he could have been trapped in for who knows how long.

“He knew you’d get him out,” MJ said. She punctuated the statement with a friendly jab to his arm, but the playfulness didn’t reach her expression. 

“I can’t stop thinking about it.” Peter groaned, nursing at an iced coffee. “It’s not like he's dead. Not for real.”

“But it was real, wasn’t it? Like, yeah, he came back but he died,” MJ said. “I know in Spider-Man world that kinda thing is normal, I guess, but Peter Parker knows that death is permanent. It may be just too much suspension of disbelief for you. You’re traumatized.” 

She took Peter’s hand, giving it a squeeze. 

  
  


Peter took Wade’s hand into his, clutching at the limp wrist, digging his heels into the shattered asphalt for leverage as he pulled. 

The building had come down very suddenly. The extraterrestrial underground worm sent entire structures into the air, splitting and scattering the roads. Occasionally, a toxic spine split through the ground, dragging across each avenue like a shark fin. 

Tony buzzed through the air, tracking the path of the alien while Clint and Natasha ushered bystanders away from the carnage. 

“Spidey!” Wade yelled. It was the only warning Peter had before two hundred and forty pounds of muscle barreled into him, launching him into the street. 

Peter landed on his arm. He was familiar with the tell-tale crunch of a clean break. White hot pain spread across his clavicle.

“Deadpool! What the hell?” 

Wade stood over him, knees bent in a powerful squat, arms overhead, bracing against a mountain of rubble. 

“Shit,” Peter gasped. “Wade, let me help!”

Wade shook his head, his arms quivering. 

“Get outta the way, baby boy. This volcano is about to erupt, if you catch my drift.”

Again, Deadpool died all the time. _Damnit, Peter, he dies and it’s normal and recurrent and it’s nothing to cry about,_ but still, Peter’s insides ached as he scurried away, unable to watch the cinder blocks and terracotta brick tumble down, burying Wade beneath a hill of cement. 

Peter felt like a coward when uncle Ben was shot. He could still feel the lead coursing through his arteries, rusting his joints together, frozen in place. He watched Ben’s spirit leak out of him, too scared to move, to look away, to do anything but cry.

Peter’s eyes stung behind the stoic mask. Deadpool’s arm jutted out of the debris. It was almost comical. Wade would’ve made a _Terminator_ joke or high-fived the upright appendage. Wade wouldn’t cry about it.

Peter took off a glove and used his fingertips to check Wade’s wrist for a pulse. He was almost relieved when he felt nothing, a thought he would mull over with guilt for days. At least if Wade was dead it meant he wasn’t in pain.

Peter gave the limb a tug. Nothing. 

“I need backup,” Peter spoke into his comm. “Deadpool’s buried and needs an assist.”

“He’s gonna have to wait, kid,” Natasha said. Her voice was too calm and collected for someone who had been running around for at least an hour. “We gotta get these civilians off the streets first.”

“Seriously?”

“He’ll be fine, Web-head,” Tony said. “We can all dig him out when this worm is fish bait.” 

It made sense. Wade, although exceptionally skilled at dying, couldn’t stay dead. It was logical for Peter to turn his attention to those around him that death affected more permanently. Even so, the sight of Wade’s forearm, held out, sliced through any logic.

“I can’t just leave him here.” Peter dragged hunks of concrete down from the hill of rubble. “Sorry, guys.” 

It took a few minutes, but Peter was able to deadlift the last of the slabs off of Wade. 

“Hey, Webs. Fancy seeing you here.” Wade let out a shaky cough. His voice was wet with blood. 

“You’re alive.” Peter knelt down beside the merc, hands hovering over him, afraid to touch. 

“Now I am. Was out dead for a bit there.” Wade laughed. “Now I know how a panini feels.”

“Can you stand?”

“Nah. My spine’s still shattered. I’m pretty sure I’m all Professor X from the waist down, if you know what I mean.”

Peter was grateful for his mask, because he did cry. The tears sponged the red fabric against his cheeks, and he set a gentle palm onto Wade’s thigh. 

“Oh shit, baby boy. That’s not fair! Touching my leg all sexy-like when I can’t even feel it.”

Peter let out a choked laugh. “Shut up, Wade.”

  
  


_And I don’t look so great,_

  
  


How does one acclimate to watching someone they care for die? Peter still hadn’t. He left behind a fallout zone wherever he went, and it was the ones he loved that paid the price for it. 

He’d gotten lost in the calculations of his feelings, staring blankly at a vending machine, finger hovering over worn letters that he couldn’t comprehend. Then he snapped out of it, and tapped in the code for a bag of chips. 

Thoughts of Wade permeated his days like an invisible leak, one he couldn’t pinpoint to patch up. Why, suddenly, had Wade’s on-again off-again fling with death become an intrusive thought at the sight of an open window, a loud car engine stuttering, or the flap of a tarp on the sidewalk?

The answer came to him while dangling Wade above a burning factory floor, his other hand clutching onto an iron pole. They’d almost made it out, racing across the rafters as the chemicals combusted and spat flames everywhere. 

It was definitely love. There’s no worse time to realize it. The rafter gave out beneath their hurried footsteps, Peter barely able to snatch Wade’s hand as it reached out to him. It was as he looked down upon the Deadpool mask, surrounded by a halo of gold, that the pieces started to fit together, and Peter began to recognize the grief he felt for what it was: watching someone he loved die.

The grief was like _Groundhog Day_. He’d wake up one morning and that day Wade would die again, only for Peter to wake up another day and Wade was alive and the countdown began once more.

Something in his gut told him that this was it again. Wade dangled over the orange and flickering ocean of fire and chemicals. It was like looking at Hell.

“Trust me. I’ve been there. Pretty spot on,” Deadpool said. 

Peter wasn’t sure if he’d spoken out loud or if the merc just always knew what he was thinking. He should have been able to hoist Wade up without a problem. He was heavy, sure, but Peter was freakin’ Spider-Man, so saving one single person from falling to their doom should have been easy. It wasn’t. He hadn’t slept in nearly two days, and he’d spent the last two hours in hand-to-hand combat against flame spirit ninjas, whatever the hell those were, and he was so damn tired. Both web shooters were melted down into his skin. He had no idea how he was going to get them out of this.

_Don’t think of Gwen._

“Baby boy, you can’t pull me up, can you?” Wade asked. Peter hated how calm the merc was. The pit below him was a boiling cauldron and Peter’s muscles were quivering, his hold on the steel pole becoming clammy and uncertain.

“Just gimme a second,” Peter said. “I’ll figure something out.”

The railing groaned, lurching both of them a few inches closer to the flames below. 

“Aw shit.” Wade chuckled. “This is gonna hurt.”

It was probably the smallest knife Wade had, of which there were typically many hidden in his various pouches at all times, but still it stung, sinking into Peter's palm.

Peter cried out, his hand screaming at the penetration. 

He let go of Wade. He knew, watching him fall, that it had been Wade’s intention. Deadpool’s leather suit lit up first in the glow of the fire, and then in combustion. The merc sank like a cinder block, the whole thing so viscous in Peter’s eyes. 

He pictured Gwen. Gwen falling, her blue coat fluttering around her like butterfly wings. Gwen’s blond hair, tumultuous. Her eyes wide and scared and knowing.

Deadpool went down like a diver. Fluid. Focused. Mask giving away nothing. Not a shred of fear. Absolution. He landed with a snap. The ember skeleton of the building below folding and dipping, welcoming him into its molten depths. 

Peter pulled himself up into a crevice where two rails met. Between the smoke, the pain in his hand, and the grief inside him, he could barely breathe. He clung to the metal, hot beneath the rising thermals, gathering the strength and will to climb it, up to the shattered skylights, out onto the skillet roof. Fire truck sirens hummed in the distance.

  
  
  
  


Wade emerged from the ash of the building almost entirely naked. The parts of his leather suit that hadn’t burned up had melted into his uppermost layer of skin, the open wounds absorbing the fabric in their rush to heal.

It was difficult to tell where burns from the fire became the typical marring that Wade’s flesh always wore. The merc was defined, as was obvious in the suit, and even more so out of it.

“Damn. That was wild,” Wade said, like he’d just finished riding a rollercoaster. He smiled. The Deadpool mask was charred away, leaving only black bits along his ears and jawline. 

Over the years, Peter had caught glimpses of the precious secrets Wade kept beneath that mask. His chin and lips, on display any time they’d hang around fire escapes, eating cold burritos or shawarma. Once he saw a brow bone, high and sharply defined, when a well-placed claw swiped away part of Wade’s mask. 

Peter had, on occasion, fantasized about what all the different parts might look like assembled. The pink and white ripples of collagen fiber twisted in intricate, impasto strokes. But the puzzle pieces he had squirreled away into the back of his mind were partials, and Wade’s face never felt complete, having not seen his eyes.

His sapphire blue eyes. Peter couldn’t form a coherent thought at the sight of those eyes piercing through the orange and yellow and red and pink. Two sharp oil paint pearls. The color of poison. Smoke. Gasping. Blue.

Wade came to a stop before Peter. Somehow, with most of the suit gone, he was even bigger, more looming than ever before. Something fluttered in Peter’s ribs, like a hummingbird batting against a birdcage. Maybe it was because he had to look up to see Wade’s face, and it was Wade’s face that looked back. 

“I really felt like Mufasa. Simbaaaaaaaa.” Wade crammed his thumb against Peter’s forehead. Peter shoved it away, ashamed that he had been so distracted by Wade’s face he forgot to feel guilty about letting go of him.

“More like Scar,” Peter said, because of the fire, but he knew once the words escaped him that they had been wrong.

Wade laughed, but now Peter had proof that it never reached his eyes, served only to dilute the pain he felt at his own appearance.

“Ouch. I know I’m like a tall glass of beef jerky,” Wade said. “But I’m smokey and salty and you could really sink your teeth into me if you wanted.”

Peter went to casually smack him, but Wade seized his wrist. Peter’s insides lurched. He was stronger than Wade, but felt as powerless as a cat caught by the scruff. 

Wade rubbed a thumb along the cleft of his palm, just beneath where the knife wound was. It’d stopped bleeding, but the hole was open and raw. Peter thought Wade might pop the tip of his thumb into it, just to see if he could.

“Sorry about that,” Wade whispered. He lifted Peter’s hand to his mouth and kissed beside the wound. His lips felt like fine grain sandpaper. 

Peter was the one who should be sorry. He’d been reckless, again, and overly confident, also again, and it had gotten Wade killed. Again. But he couldn’t say anything. How could he, when he was being excavated by those vortex eyes? His tender flesh being kissed by sharkskin lips? If anyone asked, Peter would deny that he whimpered, but Wade squeezed his wrist, and whimper he did.  
  
  
  


_My face is just my face._

  
  


Peter couldn’t shake the memory of Wade’s back. Open and gaping, that first time he died for him. The bomb had shredded through him like mulch, and it was that thought that made Peter stay.

“Ya know, I can get freaky with it, but this isn’t the kinda collar I had in mind,” Wade said. He was chained to a metal folding chair, his arms both broken and secured behind his back. A silver and black collar adorned his neck, blinking one evil red dot.

“Shut up, Wade.” 

Peter had been tracking the merc all morning. Two taco nights in a row with Wade a no-show and Peter knew something was wrong. He broke into Deadpool’s favorite safe house, by which he meant he went through the unlocked window, and maybe hacked into his computer to find out what mission the merc was working on. He would feel bad about it if he didn’t have an inkling Wade was in trouble or if Wade hadn’t broken into Peter’s place and eaten all of the pizza rolls the week before. 

After that, it was pretty easy to find him. Cue abandoned building (no surprise there), a few armed guards, a couple of maniacal looking scientists, a whole lot of ass-handing and webbed up baddies, and then there was Wade. 

“Listen up, baby boy. This thing’s got like a minute tops on it, so why don’t you skedaddle on your way and come pick up my pieces after the finale?”

“If you didn’t have a bomb strapped to you, I’d hit you,” Peter grumbled. He knelt down before Wade, settling between his massively large thighs, and reached up to shimmy his fingers beneath the device. 

“Not that this isn’t something I’ve fantasized about for a long time. The ‘you’ part, not the head blowing off part. But seriously, all jokes aside. Scram. I’ve got this.” 

Deadpool tried to wriggle away from Peter, but the younger man grabbed the collar and pulled him forward, their faces only inches apart. 

“Shut up,” Peter repeated. “I can disarm it.” 

“This thing goes off and it’ll take you down with me. But squashed spiders don’t get back up, comprende?”

Wade’s face was bare. Peter wished he could take the opportunity to observe him at such a close proximity, but there was work to be done. He was able to remove a small panel from below the bulk of the collar, exposing a litany of wires and circuits too small to see properly from behind his mask.

Peter yanked it off, discarding the fabric on the concrete floor. He didn’t let Wade’s soft, yet audible gasp distract him. He could deal with the whole identity thing when the shitshow was over. 

The collar started to beep more rapidly. 

“Shit. Fuck.” Wade jerked his shoulders.

“Stop moving.”

“Webs, you can’t do this”

“Yes. I can.”

“Baby boy, please.”

Peter wished the bomb had a big gaudy timer, but it didn’t. He also wished it had a big red wire to cut. Also no. Sweat accumulated on his brow and the bow of his lip. He refused to think about uncle Ben. On the street. Blood lost in the blackness of the city night. He didn’t think about Gwen. Limp and doll-like, and how swift and brutal it had been to hear her head split open. 

He focused on the wires. Not Wade, barricading him from the street bomber. Wade, gasping in lungfuls of poison. Crushed beneath a toppled building. Free-falling into an inferno. Not Wade, whispering hysterical pleas in a voice that was more genuine than he had ever sounded before, begging, “Please. Please don’t.”

The collar clicked open. 

  
  
  


“You fucking idiot!” Wade slammed Peter into the cold stucco wall, his fists twisted into the front of the suit. “How could you do that?”

“What, save your life?” Peter snapped. He reached up and grabbed Wade’s wrists. He could yank him off easily, fling the merc across the room, but there was something valuable in how close and exposed they were. Peter could map the dunes in Wade’s face, could differentiate the scars from the laugh lines from the secret dimple decorating his cheek. It was more obvious when Wade threw his head back to laugh sarcastically.

“Save my life? Mine? I don’t know if you got hit in the head or something while trying to rescue me, but newsflash…” Wade shoved away from him to pace the room. “I can’t die.”

Peter let himself slide down the wall, settling on the floor. His heart hadn’t stopped pounding, but the cause kept changing. Looking for Wade. Finding Wade. The bomb. Saving Wade. 

Maybe the cause was mostly the same.

“I couldn’t just walk off and let you get blown up,” Peter said. 

“It’s happened before.”

“I’m not okay with that either! Jesus, Wade. I can’t keep watching you die and acting like it’s not affecting me.”

Wade stopped pacing circles, and turned to look down at Peter on the floor. 

“I can barely sleep. I keep dreaming about your corpse. I spend hours asking myself what I could have done differently to keep you from dying again and again.” Peter buried his face in his hands. “Jesus. Yes, you come back. No, you can’t die. But it hurts, doesn’t it?”

Wade dropped onto the ground in front of Peter and peeled his hands away from his face. 

“Shit, baby boy. Don’t cry,” he whispered. 

They spent a moment just looking at each other, silence save for the occasional sniffle. Wade cupped both of Peter’s cheeks, leaning close to rest their clammy foreheads together. With the masks gone, a different veil had been lifted. Despite the many times they had spent together playing video games, eating take-out, gazing up at the empty sky, it was in that moment that Spider-Man and Deadpool were shed away, leaving only Peter and Wade. No persona to uphold. Just the feel of their foreheads crushing together. 

“I thought you were going to die,” Wade murmured. He drifted up, bringing those sandpaper lips to Peter’s brow. “I thought, _Spider-Man is going to die_ , and that was bad enough. Then you took your mask off.”

Wade leaned back, openly staring at Peter’s face. His thumb rubbed circles along Peter’s cheekbone. Peter couldn’t imagine what he must look like to Wade. His hair was a mess, his skin flushed and pale and wet with tear-streaks highlighting the occasional freckle. 

“You take your mask off, and I see your face. And it’s so much more beautiful than anything I’ve ever imagined, and I’m looking at the face that I’m about to lose.” 

Peter drew in a sharp breath. He had been so consumed by the guilt of Wade’s repeated sacrifices, that he had completely glossed over the fact that each and every time, Wade had saved his life. 

“What the hell would I do if you died?” Wade whispered.

Peter placed his hands over Wade’s, lacing their fingers together. Wade kissed the hollow of his cheek, then the corner of his lips, giving Peter a chance to turn away if he wanted. Peter just squeezed Wade’s hands tighter, and welcomed his kiss. It was coarse, but kind, and Wade’s lips trembled, and it was nothing like how Peter thought a kiss between them might be. So soft. So delicate. Like the wet wings of a monarch blossoming from its cocoon. 

“Webs, if you ever do that again, I’ll kill you.”

Peter let out a damp laugh. 

“Peter. My name’s Peter.”

Wade kissed him again. Harder. More certain.

“Okay, Peter. If you ever do that again, I’ll kill you.”

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
